“I don’t think they ought to try and balance the budget on the backs of the poor.” Now guess which liberal Democrat made that observation? OK, it wasn’t a liberal. And actually, it wasn’t a Democrat. It was President George W. Bush. And at least for that moment, he got it right.

It’s a pity — and worse — that fellow Republicans seem to be waging a war against the poor in America. And as we might gather from Bush’s comment, it has been going on for a lot of years now. Bluntly put, it is shameful. It speaks to the hypocrisy of so many Republicans who claim conservatism and Christianity as the core of their beliefs, yet who brazenly ignore or flout the teachings of real conservatism and Christianity. And yes, tea partiers, we’re looking at you, too.

Here’s what going on these days, in case you’ve missed it. Republicans in Congress are proposing $40 billion cuts in the federal food stamp program. That’s right — those 48 million shiftless, hungry Americans — men, women and children, real people needing benefits, not figures on a graph — are getting too much help from the government and they need to be taught a lesson. So starve them. And that proposal comes on the back of a major cut in food stamps that kicked in on the first of November when an increase approved at the beginning of the recession in 2008 ended. I personally know a family of three who get less than $400 each month in benefits; As of Friday they get $24 less. Want to try feeding your family on that, Ted Cruz? Or John Boehner?

Now let’s be truthful. Democrats share in blame for that sudden cut in benefits this month, since it results from a deal they and the Obama White House thought would work with Republicans five years ago. So much for that idea. When the GOP got control of the House of Representatives, the deal went sour. Lesson: no deals with Republicans please.

Republican governors and legislators around the nation have been refusing to expand their Medicaid programs which provide health protection for the poor — even at no or minimal cost to the states. Why? Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman suggests, with evidence, that the party no longer stands for anything except hostility to the poor. “They are still clearly passionate about making sure that the poor and unlucky get as little help as possible,” he wrote last week. And if Paul Krugman is too much of a liberal for your taste, consider this statement several weeks ago from Ohio Gov, John Kasich, a Republican, speaking about his party: “I am concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That, if you’re poor, somehow you;re shiftless and lazy.”

And to add just a bit more from Mr. Krugman about why Republicans are so antagonistic to the poor. It has something to do with race, that stain on our country that never quite goes away. We still hear echoes about “that black man in the White House” from radical Republicans. Republicans joke about “the President from Kenya,” and large numbers of them don’t believe the President was born in Hawaii. And according to a study quoted by Krugman, the Republican base voter “is very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority.” And those voters see programs like food stamps and Medicaid as disproportionately helping those minorities. That, of course, includes poor blacks. And poor Latinos. And poor people.

How appalling that we seem to be at war with ourselves. And that the war has become a rallying cry for so many shameless politicians.

I know everyone is writing about the same subject now, but I’m entitled, too. I’ve been a Sox fan since … well, as readers here will know, since the days of Mel Parnell. So while I’m not quite a lifer, I’ve been there through a lot of disappointments and celebrations. And this one does indeed feel very, very special.

The Brotherhood of the Beard came together to amaze and delight and finally unite all of us in the Red Sox Nation. An extraordinary coming together of talents and personalities turned last year’s worst team in the American League East to the best team in Major League Baseball in 2013. And who said 13 is an unlucky number? And they didn’t do it the easy way in the playoffs. They rolled through a parade of MLB’s finest pitchers to claim their much-deserved championship. But no one watched them and marveled at their unbounded talent; instead, they stuck around to admire their resilience and their guts and their determination. And surely in that there is a lesson for all of us, Sox fans or not. All of us who were never the most handsome, the best athletes, the most gifted at anything, can rejoice in what this 2013 team accomplished with its players.

So, yeah, I’m celebrating along with millions of others. (How did you enjoy the Series, Yankee fans?) And on Saturday, I won’t be there in person for the Duck Boat Parade, but I’ll be watching on TV and yelling with the rest. And pausing for a moment — along with everyone else — when that parade gets to Boylston Street and the site of the Marathon bombings. That was the low point, the awful, terrible low point for Boston and people who love it. The parade will stop, I’m sure, and pay respects to those who suffered and died there. All of us will, really. We will remember. And then we’ll all rejoice at this wonderful group of players who gave everyone so many good reasons to look forward. It is a celebration well-earned.

The Boston Red Sox. World Champions 2013!!!

An important part of living in New England was revealed to me today. It is a lesson learned.

For the last few weeks, with the fading of bright reds, yellows and oranges along the landscape and the arrival of a somewhat sodden gray, we’ve been getting ready for winter’s challenges. As first-time New Englanders, we’re excited, determined and ever-so slightly concerned. So we now have several really nice wool sweaters, some silk long undies, snow boots, fur ear muffs, a pair of oil lanterns, lots of batteries, more candles than any cathedral would require for mass, a full propane tank to fuel the grill in the event of power outages, gallons of water for drinking and whatever, food stocks to hold out for at least a week, an emergency radio, an Eskimo dog for additional warmth, and a wood stove, which we successfully fired up for the first time a few nights ago. And today we got our delivery of a cord of wood.

Herein lies the lesson.

The truck arrived with the wood — kiln-dried, nicely cut and ready for burning throughout the winter months — right on schedule, backed up to the shed in the yard, and dumped one cord of really great looking wood in front of the shed. Then the driver drove away. “Hey,” I shouted, then more loudly, “HEY!” Who’s going to stack this cord in the shed, I asked out loud? As the truck disappeared down the road, it dawned on me for the very first time that I was going to be the one stacking that cord of terrific-looking wood in the shed. That now-evident fact had never occurred to me. So I promptly called my long-time New England friend and asked if this had ever happened to anyone here before? When she finished laughing, I knew the answer.

So today, I’ve been stacking a cord of wood. Frankly, before today I had no idea how much wood was in a cord. I mean, in Atlanta, who needed wood? If it was cold today, it would be warmer tomorrow, so just turn up the heat. Of course when it never gets warmer until April, you’ve got to do something else. Welcome to a New England winter. So as I say, I’m now slowly, slowly reducing that pile of wood into sort-of neat rows inside the shed. I suppose there’s an art to stacking, somehow, but I have no clue what it might be. In fact, I actually doubt there’s an art to it. It’s just work.

But there’s really a rather cheery epilogue to my learning. Apart from making it clear that we are here for the long haul, we’ll get through winter and eagerly look for spring (or mud, whichever comes first), there’s finally the sense that I’m becoming a New Englander. Not just someone who is here, but someone whose home is here now, and whose life is here now, too. And someone who welcomes — well, at least accepts — some of what that means. And I must confess, it feels pretty darned good. At least as long as I can find the aspirin.

James Boswell will turn 273 years old on Tuesday the 29th of October. Perhaps a small chorus of “Happy Birthday” please? Perhaps for a few of us a reminder about who James Boswell might be appropriate, along with a short note on why many of us still celebrate him in ways he surely would have enjoyed (a good, stiff drink foremost among them).

Born in Edinburgh in 1740, a Scot who much preferred the conviviality of London to his dour native country, James Boswell was a fascinating, charismatic character who — had he been a fictional creation — probably would have subject to extreme disbelief. There was a lot of the paradoxical in him: a good husband and father, he was also a chronic womanizer and an alcoholic. And lest I forget to mention it, he was the author of the greatest biography ever written in the English language, “The Life of Samuel Johnson,” first published in 1791 and never out of print since.

In that biography, Dr. Samuel Johnson emerges as one of the most powerful, overwhelming personalities ever described in literature — and yet, “he never quite escapes from his disciple, James Boswell,” writes critic Adam Sisman. In fact, Boswell is as much a force in the biography as his subject, and considering that Johnson was the preeminent man of letters in 18th century England, an outsized human being both physically and intellectually, that’s saying something. Boswell is not just an integral part of that biography but really, he’s the central character in my mind.

That book is not the only one he wrote. “Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides” vividly recounts a 1773 trip in which Boswell and Johnson traveled around many remote places of Scotland at a time when hardly anyone else did. The book offers some often very funny moments for the two unlikely companions and — WARNING: shameless confession coming up — was the basis for my 2011 book “Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster’ which you may not only read about but purchase at this site at this very moment if you are so inclined.

Boswell’s other books, however, “are like silverly minnows swimmming around a majestic whale” declares Boswell biographer Peter Martin in a brilliant reference to the impact of the extraordinary “Life of Johnson.” It’s a book you ought to read; you won’t regret the time.

As for Boswell, we celebrate him today not only for that distinguished literary achievement but for giving us a remarkable portrait of himself, in so many ways more fulfilling than the one he painted of Dr. Johnson. Boswell kept an astonishing number of diaries in which he recorded his daily life and thoughts over years and years. These have been published, and they not only document lives long past as vividly as if seen on television today but show us a Boswell who is a grandly, wonderfully, lovingly flawed human being, someone more memorable than any other figure i know of from the 18th century. And possibly beyond.

The diaries come in a dozen volumes, more than most of us will ever bother to read. ‘Tis a pity. They are absolutely breathtaking and downright lovable. I’ll be re-reading some passages in them to mark mark number 273 for J.B. And I’ve got that drink within arm’s reach.

A few years back, I wrote a nationally syndicated travel column which focused a lot of attention on the airlines, not surprisingly. And there was a mantra that accompanied most of those pieces. It was, simply put, “the airlines are not your friends.” Of course, if you spend six figures with them each year, they are your friend, so go ahead and skip this comment if you fall into that elite category.

For the rest of us, it an important thing to keep in mind whether you’re traveling with the airlines or thinking about it. My first suggestion to you is that if you have any other alternative to flying, take it. Take the car, take the train, take the bus, the bike, the ice skates, run, walk … well, you get the idea. If you have no choice, brace yourself for the latest headline: America’s airlines think coach passengers have it too comfortable back there in steerage; they want to see if they can’t squeeze you just a little more. And they can.

Today’s Wall Street Journal, which regularly offers some savvy travel counsel, reports that the airlines are shrinking the size of coach seats so they can fit another seat across each row. In other words, so much for those roomy 18″ wide seats — they are shrinking to 17″. And Happy Thanksgiving to you.

As a diagram in the WSJ shows, a fairly typical movie theater seat offers you anywhere from 7-8″ more width. Amtrak has over 3″ extra on its trains. And this squeeze is not just for domestic flights — it’s for those long-haul overseas trips, you know, like 15 hours to Hong Kong.

And here’s the real grabber for me: the airlines say it doesn’t matter because customers will be so distracted by the entertainment and the food! I swear to you, I’m not making that up. “With food and TV, people are mesmerized,” says one of them. Really? Crammed into an unsittable seat, shoulder to shoulder with an unforgiving (and larger sized) neighbor, the satisfied customer in front of you reclining into your chest, you are mesmerized by food and TV? Who in their right mind is mesmerized by TV in their big recliner at home? And food? Seriously? Count back to the last good coach meal you enjoyed on any trip. And keep counting.

On top of that, of course, there are the ever-burgeoning fees for everything from flight changes to baggage, tightly packed planes that foretell problems when bad weather strands passenger this winter, minimal service, sharply rising airfares, and …. well, you probably already know the drill. So let me just repeat again: the airlines are not your friends. The airlines are not your friends The airlines are not your friends.

The Obama administration’s online health insurance marketplace rollout has been a train wreck. That’s very obvious; even the President acknowledges it. It’s a disgrace, and heads should roll. I have an idea or two for what might help, but we know already to discount some of the criticism, specifically what comes from the radical Republican Tea Party naysayers.

After forcing a government shutdown and pushing the economy to the brink with their dangerous debt acrobatics — all in a failed effort to defund the health insurance law in defiance of the majority of the American people — they are now focusing on telling us how awful the rollout is. Well, yes, it is. No question about it. But their words are appallingly hypocritical since they have no desire to improve the system for the benefit of millions, only to cross their fingers and hope it collapses. So here’s a headline for you: it isn’t going to disappear, no matter how much Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, Louis Gohmert, Ted Yoho (what a wonderfully goofy name!) and their extreme right-wingers might wish.

Getting it fixed right is the urgent need now, even before assigning blame for the mess it’s in. And the administration has just assigned a “technology overseer” named Jeffrey Zients to be the guy to accept the challenge of repairing the damage. He’s got a reputation as a good crisis manager, and he’ll need to call on his experience to accomplish this. The President already is sending in a team of technology reinforcements. That’s all good, if belated.

And here’s what else might help. There are some states — especially California and Connecticut — which have spent nearly two years developing and perfecting their own online health insurance websites. And guess what? They are working splendidly. Thousands of people are being signed up with their options clearly spelled out. So why doesn’t someone — or why didn’t someone — look at those states as a model before trying to reinvent the wheel at the federal level? I doubt it’s too late to do so now.

And some lawmakers are suggesting the President extend the sign-up period to compensate for the lengthy delays in getting a workable website running efficiently. That also seems a good idea to me. Let’s make it as easy as possible for consumers to see what’s there and to get enrolled. Stretching the sign-up period can only help.

In fact, there are other things that ought to be done. One of the most important is to undertake a serious, major publicity effort to let people know about the health care law and why they need to sign up. There are so many positives that most of us don’t know anything about because the rollout has been such a disaster. Maybe that’s why there’s been so little good PR to go with it. If so, now is the time to start a well-funded PR program that covers television, print and social media. And President Obama needs to use his bully pulpit to full advantage.

Why these things haven’t happened is a question no one has yet answered. We need to find out why and take appropriate action. The Affordable Care Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation to pass in generations. It is far too important to screw around with, and far too important to listen to the Tea Party voices.

Sometimes the quietest things can speak the loudest.

We were driving the other day down Highway 63, and for a few minutes it seemed almost as if we had slipped into another world. If you don’t know 63, it’s a narrow two-lane road that meanders through Westmoreland and Chesterfield in southwest New Hampshire, connecting busy Highway 12 with even busier Highway 9. I suppose it could be a short cut, but I don’t think too many people use it for that. Instead, it’s the path through a series of lovely homes and farms, some small and others quite large, and bits of two villages. In that way, it’s nothing special, sort of like what you’ll find dotting the landscapes of New Hampshire and neighboring Vermont.

But on this trip, we seemed to to pay more attention to the road itself than usual. As it winds south around curves and up and down gentle hills, the highway becomes increasingly closed in by trees and low-lying shrubs, the houses get closer to the road, and you can feel yourself being hugged by what surrounds you. Mind you, it’s not a claustrophobic hug, but an easy embrace, like you might get from an old friend. And it feels friendly. It also look wonderful, at this time of year the leaves various hues, especially golds and browns, and they gather themselves along the side of the road, defining the edges with nature’s shifting colors. It’s simply breathtaking, and it goes on far longer than we could have hoped.

The only thing I can recall similarly is a stretch of road — I believe it’s Highway 7 — that runs between Charleston, SC and the once-small suburb of Summerville. It’s also a two-lane blacktop that is lined by trees laden with low-hanging Spanish moss that waves gently in the breeze of passing cars. And like 63, it gracefully embraces those who slow down a little to savor the landscape surrounding them. In this case the landscape includes several prominent 18th and 19th century plantation homes, part of the rich history that consumes and almost buried the Carolina Lowcountry generations ago. No question, however, it is gorgeous.

I’ve lived in both places, New England and South Carolina. Nobody is going to confuse the two. But in some ways meaningful and not there are connections that strike me; and driving down 63 the other day I was reminded of one of the most pleasant. Fall in New England and spring in South Carolina. Two peas in a pod, sort of.

As a kid growing up in Atlanta, I was a big fan of the Boston Red Sox. The reason why is simple and maybe a little strange. You see, I was a left-hander. In all of the games with my sports-loving group of friends, I threw the football and the baseball with my left hand. And I was the only one who did; all the others were righties, and because of that, they made fun of me and my weird left hand. Kids can be cruel, you recall.

So anyway, my dad was a newspaper reader. We subscribed to the local paper, and every morning at breakfast he would pull out his favorite sections — the front page and the comics — and leave the rest. The rest always included the sports section, and I started reading it daily (a habit that has never left me decade and decades later). One day I came across an article about the Red Sox winning an important game thanks to the pitching wizardry of a man named Mel Parnell. And wouldn’t you know it, Mel Parnell was a left-hander! Instantly, I was a fan. No, really, more than that. I was totally enraptured with Mel Parnell — I began closely following the team and especially its star pitcher with the same intensity and devotion that our dog Toby now lavishes on his chances of getting a helping of bacon from the breakfast table.

It became evident to my juvenile mind fairly soon after that the rest of my buddies didn’t care all that much for the Red Sox and couldn’t even recognize the name of Mel Parnell. But that didn’t matter — I memorized his pitching stats as if they were guideposts to the Holy Grail, and and now nearly six decades later — I can still remember without a pause at this moment that Mel Parnell won 25 games in 1949 and only lost seven times, Not only that, but I can assure you that his ERA that year was 2.77, and I swear I didn’t have to look it up. I was a kid who learned to appreciate the importance of Earned Run Average way back when.

Long story short: I have never stopped being a fan of the Sox, no matter where i lived. And i never stopped remembering Mel Parnell. Few people could have experienced any greater sadness than I when I heard the news that he had died last year at the age of 90. He will never know what inspiration he gave me, and I am and will be grateful to him to my very last day.

The joys and frustration of being a Red Sox fan have continued without change, too. The year 2004 is a memory no less burned into my mind, and 2007 only slightly less so. And now in 2013, like so many others in the Red Sox nation, I’m excited again by the remarkable new edition of the team. It’s a delightfully renewable pleasure, and I’m aglow after watching the Sox clinch another World Series appearance last night against Detroit. But if there is any regret — and it’s only a trickle — it would have to be the fact that somehow, in some magical time-traveling way, Mel Parnell couldn’t take the mound for Boston in that first WS game. I know he would shut down the Cardinals.
Just call me a dreamer.

Living in the South for decades, I had always heard abut the spectacular fall foliage displays in Vermont and New Hampshire and elsewhere around New England. Every fall for decades I thought about how lovely the photographs are and wouldn’t it be delightful to see it first-hand. But instead — every fall I resigned myself to enjoying the leaf colors in the South, watching the gradual procession from green to orange, yellow and red. It was unfailingly pretty, whether in the North Georgia mountains or the high hills of Upper South Carolina or often in the lowlands, where the colors sometimes didn’t begin to showcase themselves until close to Thanksgiving.

And then we moved to New England. To New Hampshire, specifically, just across the Connecticut River from Vermont. In other words, right smack in the middle of the long=heralded fall foliage displays. And you know what I discovered? They were right. Everyone who ever said that New England in the fall is stunningly beautiful got it absolutely, totally, completely, unequivocally right.

It has been a season of astonishing discovery for us, my wife and I. Moments of breathtaking sights, revelations of color inevitably followed by cries of “look over there” and enough finger-pointing to characterize us as leaf peepers of the most intense sort. We drove up to New Hampshire’s North Country, above Mount Washington, several weeks ago to see one of nature’s most gorgeous, colorful places. We did see wonderful things, but unfortunately because the television weatherman’s forecast was off, the day proved sun-less, and many of the brightest colors were muted. It was nonetheless an amazing trip. And we’ve made several since, though the sun has proven only an occasional companion.

Recently, we haven’t had to drive anywhere — the colors are all around us, just by stepping into the yard. What continues to surprise and delight us are the various hues just one tree can produce: green turning to yellow, or gold, and then to brown, and then to varying shades of brown, every change as refreshing and as different as the first. It’s something we can now never take for granted. Or require photographs to appreciate. Nope, no more. We’ve seen the New England foliage for the first time, and it has been an energizing, even life-giving experience. We are no longer among the envious.

And yes, we know winter is coming. There will be some very, very different things to cope with. Somehow, though, I think we’re just about ready.

So, the battle is over, and sanity prevailed. Unfortunately the war is anything but over, and once we get past the Christmas and New Years holidays, I fear we can only look forward to more. There is scant evidence that the Tea Party Republicans with House Speaker John Boehner have learned anything from this costly debacle. They are itching to to the same thing in a few more months.

For one, Sen. Ted Cruz the presumptive Tea Party presidential candidate in 2016, still insists that shutting down the government and going to the brink with default was “responding to the will of the American people.” That in spite of the dozens of national surveys that showed exactly the opposite: that an overwhelming majority of Americans DID NOT want the government shutdown. Smiling Ted apparently gets his own special numbers from his Facebook or Twitter accounts. But leave it to someone not in Congress to sum up this absurdity. Marilyn Huston, a Republican activist in Keene, NH is quoted in the local newspaper after the vote as saying that President Obama bears the brunt of responsibility because — in her bizarre words — “He sees it his way, his way only and doesn’t realize he represents the whole country.” Incredible. That’s the point, Ms. Huston: he does represent the entire country, and the Tea Party does not. Never has. What a truly peculiar perversion of reality.

Sadly, the Tea Party’s doomed effort seems to have further divided what remains of the Republican Party. Those moderates in the party — who believe there is a role for government — are now split from their radical conservatives colleagues, who are not interested in or prepared to govern. By default, that leaves us only the Democrats to oversee this Republic ad infinitum. And even I don’t think that’s a wise course. We need two — at least two — active, legitimate political parties who are willing to debate and compromise and govern on the basis of serving the best interests of the country. But if there’s only one party that fits into that broad category, the best interests of this democracy are not being met.

Mercifully the Tea Party still represents a small minority of the American people and American political thought. The shrill, small voices of the Tea Party may have reached their ascendancy with this latest political feud; we can all hope so. Noise and emptiness are their values, blind denial is their strategy. For all the chaos and money this cost the country — upwards of $24 billion over 16 days? — it didn’t work. The Tea Party takeover was a failure, just like the people who promulgated it knowing it could not succeed. But if we believe the Tea Party zealots have learned anything from this, we are mistaken. Like the worst sort of nightmare, I am expecting they will return, in ever smaller numbers, ever louder, coarser voices, and with ever more empty ideas. A scary thought, and it isn’t even Halloween yet.